Did You Know...

... that DeLand Fire is on top of the leaderboard after the training round?

posted Jul 3rd, 2005 -
The activities at the competition site of the Malevsky Cup 2005 picked up pace and momentum today. Usually teams do not jump very much on the last day before a competition. However, the bad weather of the last week put many teams significantly behind the planned meet preparation, and they used the much better weather conditions today to warm up for the competition.

Teams, competitors, videographers, pilots, manifest, staff and judges had a very busy day, and the NSL-TV used the warm-up procedures in the judging room to steal some videos of the official training jumps from the DZ-TV.

Two 8-way jumps happened to be used for judges training, while the DZ-TV was running in the NSL office. They were the same two teams that competed hard for the fourth place in Croatia 2004, Germany Remscheid and Italy Extremo 8. The videos of the training jumps show that both teams will most likely continue with their business where they ended up in Croatia.

The German team Remscheid had the 14th point in time at the first freeze frame viewing, and the score was corrected to 13 points at a later viewing. Italy with new member Marco Arrigo tied the German score of 13 points and was a little bit behind at the end of the working time. This race for the 4th place in Russia seems to be guaranteed.

Infinity, the Dutch national team of the 4-way Female class, picked the faster sequence of the two jumps that the judges had offered for the training jumps: M-12-L-A. The judges were obviously interested in getting familiar with the new Block 12 (Bundy - Bundy).

23 points was the highest score of all training jumps on the leaderboard today. The teams had the choice between M-12-L-A or 17-3-6, and the majority decided to show the faster sequence with Block 12 to the judges. The highscore of 23 points was also captured on NSL-TV, and it shows "Ukraine Sky Dance" for the team name.

The NSL News was impressed with the Ukrainian score. However, the team looked familiar, and a closer look at the slate and the video showed that the performing team was actually DeLand Fire.

The video of the same training jump by the Russian Sky Panthers was shown later. The Sky Panthers won the bronze medal at the world championship in 2004. The score of 20 points for the training round included the deduction of one point.

The competition draw will take place in the evening and will be posted as soon as it is available.